Random Thoughts Anew

[apl68]

Sushi: it's only as old as it feels.

Friday I had a chance to eat sushi for the first time in months.  While waiting for it to arrive, I called in to work to see how everything was going.  Turned out there was a bit of an emergency situation that I had to try to deal with over the phone.  So there I was trying to fix things over the phone while my sushi sat there getting cold...

[apl68]

Today I went to the doctor for an ear exam that led to an ear cleaning.  Of course EVERYBODY in the building was following mask protocols.  As I sat waiting in the exam room, in the eerily quiet clinic and breathing through my mask, suddenly a famous story by Nathaniel Hawthorne popped into my head.

"I look around me, and lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"

Except of course you mostly see masks around that are every color but black.

[ab_grp]

I realized recently that my husband and I have different ideas about what "a couple" means (not in terms of a relationship).  For example, if I ask him how long a particular movie is, he will often say it's a couple hours.  I asked him about that, and he means about 2 hours when he says a couple.  And then to him there are longer (which are a few hours) or shorter movies.  So I asked him last night if he means 2 miles if he says a store is a couple miles down the road.  Yes, he does.  On the other hand, for me, every movie is a couple hours.  And if I say a store is a couple miles down the road, probably start looking for it at about a mile but it may be 10 miles.  And I am distancely challenged, so that is the best estimate I can give sometimes.  But, that's all a couple miles to me.  Just struck me as interesting, our different definitions.  And good to know to avoid miscommunication!

[downer]

Academia.edu tells me in their emails to me that I have been mentioned in over 600 academic papers. I assume that this is probably a total lie. I'm certainly not paying money to them to get a list.

How many mentions does Academia.edu tell you that you have?

[ab_grp]

I finally unsubscribed from the Academia.edu emails last week, but as of that time I had had 1005 mentions.  I'm sure at least 99% of them are inaccurate given the other emails in which they recommended papers to me based on other papers they say I've read that I have certainly not.  I actually clicked on the last email because it said I had been mentioned in a paper by an actual colleague of mine, so it's possibly true (I was just shocked and wanted to find out if the website was actually correct this time), but of course it wants you to pay to find out more, and I can always find that information elsewhere! The daily paper recommendations (which were often really bizarre) were bad enough, but they started on some daily newsletter or something as well.  Just looking through the previous emails now, they notified me that there were 70,583 new papers that matched a query they stated I had searched for (which I hadn't).  I don't know what's up with that website, but I pretty much ignore it.  If only I could list the 1005 (probably more since then!) mentions!

[mamselle]

I decided to pay for the more expensive Academia version and have found it worthwhile. It's c. $65 a year, and it was one of the things I said I'd do when the small amount of money shared out from my mom's house came my way.

They send me an email each time a potential citation appears and I have the choice to agree that it's mine or deny it. (There are a few goofy ones, but it's led to having 15 citations I didn't know I had).

I have a number of readers, a couple of whom I'm in contact with, and it's an easy way to send references to people.

I'm also following a number of folks in the areas I work on, and was surprised (and pleased) to see that some of them also follow me.

I won't bother with Facebook and its kind because my time is a bit too tight to do that much social media stuff and I'm sure I'd fall into the update trap every other day. But this setup is useful and doesn't require too much of my time, so I'm fine with it.

It may also be more important to me because, as an independent scholar, I don't have some of the other connections and networks available to me that I might have through a direct school affiliation, but it's been useful and I'm glad I've kept it up.

If I had a faculty page on a school website I might not need it, but I don't so I do.

Reminder to self: I need to upload all the work I've been doing in the past few months soon.

That will probably bring on another cycle of readers and followers, which I'm looking forward to.

M.

[ab_grp]

Mamselle, have you checked our Researchgate? That website does essentially the same things but for free.  If there are concerns about that site (from anyone reading this), please post them, but I have found that site to be pretty useful and fairly hands-off.  It tells me how many reads there are of the abstracts of my papers, any reads of the full texts, any citations of them and sometimes from whom or from which institutions or countries.  From what I recall, it also allows me to confirm if I am the author of a paper it finds that seems to be mine.  It also notifies me if it thinks it's found a full text of one of my papers online.  It sends me a weekly stats report that I can check if I'd like.  It will also suggest papers or let me know if people I follow there have posted a new project or paper.  People can request full texts or message me (or vice versa) as well.  Anyway, if you have not taken a look, maybe that would also be a good place for you to post your information.  I am currently an independent scholar as well for the first time in many years, and I have been meaning to look to see if we had such a thread here as on the old fora because I am unsure of how to navigate some of this (publishing or doing research without an affiliation).  Thanks for the reminder to do so!

[mamselle]

Actually, I did check out Researchgate when the suggestion appeared on the old forum and decided I'd already done the work and learned the ropes on Academia, so opted not to add that learning curve to my tasks.

I might could check it out again, but probably not now....too busy!

And we might (I might, even) have started an Independent scholar thread here, but I'd have to go looking for it to see.

Feel free to start one up if you like...I think there are a few of us nosing about.

M.

ETA: There's one on research grants for Independent scholars but nothing else I can find.

So, maybe time for a new thread?  --M.

[mahagonny]

Some of those woodwind instruments, you can't fool me, they don't do anything different from each other. They just make 'em look different for show.

[Treehugger]

Academia.edu tells me in their emails to me that I have been mentioned in over 600 academic papers. I assume that this is probably a total lie. I'm certainly not paying money to them to get a list.

How many mentions does Academia.edu tell you that you have?

Yup. Academia.edu tells me my name has been mentioned in over 330 papers. What?!? It is an uncommon name, so maybe ? But I haven't been an academic for years and my only "published" work is my dissertation (available online through my university) and as far as I know it has only been cited once. No way I'm paying to see all the other 329 times my name was supposedly mentioned. Total scam.

Or wait, maybe I'm in mentioned in acknowledgments hundreds of time. "And I am grateful to treehugger for just leaving me the heck alone so I could finally finish this project" x329.

[Wahoo Redux]

Academia.edu tells me in their emails to me that I have been mentioned in over 600 academic papers. I assume that this is probably a total lie. I'm certainly not paying money to them to get a list.

How many mentions does Academia.edu tell you that you have?

Yup. Academia.edu tells me my name has been mentioned in over 330 papers. What?!? It is an uncommon name, so maybe ? But I haven't been an academic for years and my only "published" work is my dissertation (available online through my university) and as far as I know it has only been cited once. No way I'm paying to see all the other 329 times my name was supposedly mentioned. Total scam.

Or wait, maybe I'm in mentioned in acknowledgments hundreds of time. "And I am grateful to treehugger for just leaving me the heck alone so I could finally finish this project" x329.

Oh man.  I don't have anything like that many mentions.  I'm so deflated.  Even the picture that pops up if you put "Wahoo Redux" into the Academia.edu search bar is of someone else. 

Then again, I found out that my niece who is now in college is "following me" on Academia.edu, so that's nice.

[mamselle]

They use some kind of search function that turns up odd matches (someone with my last name is researching testosterone in saliva, or something) that you have to cull out upon notification, or they do indeed pile up.

But I only see a couple in a week, and it's useful to me--not having all the fancy-dancy citation stuff the sciences do, and being an independent scholar without the school affiliations that do free humanities searches--so I count it all as gain and get on with it.

Different strokes/folks/citations/smitations....

M.

[downer]

I'm teaching at 3 schools this fall.

One does not have any institutional support for Zoom or any other synchronous interaction with students, yet they say that about 30% of their classes will be synchonous. I guess people are just using Zoom on their own.

At another, their intranet page has been down all weekend, making Blackboard inaccessible. Class starts in 2 weeks.

At the third, they seem to be having problems with their encryption for https. My browser warns me about dangers in accessing some of their pages. This has been happening, on and off, for a couple of weeks.

I'm getting the impression that IT and web service departments are having some trouble keeping up. It makes me suspect that the new semester may start with a whimper, not a bang.

[apl68]

Having now attended a number of Zoom meetings for work purposes, I now extend my sympathies to all who must use it for classes, whether they signed up for distance ed to start with or were forced into it by circumstances.

[ab_grp]

I'm amassing some equipment for a new line of work and am looking at web cams (and am also not looking forward to actually having to use it).  Doing this shopping has reminded me that sometimes the recommendations based on purchases or the "frequently purchased with" can seem very strange.  Apparently, the webcam I am looking at right now is frequently purchased with a treadmill and foot peel masks.  I don't think I want to know more about that.